Former top Kremlin adviser is hospitalised in Europe

MOSCOW (NYTIMES) - Anatoly Chubais, who resigned as a top Kremlin adviser shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, was hospitalised on Sunday (July 31) in a western European country in critical condition with the symptoms of a rare neurological disorder.

Chubais had suddenly grown numb in his hands and legs, his wife, Avodtya Smirnova, told Russian journalist Ksenia Sobchak.

Chubais, 67, told Sobchak himself that he had been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which the body's immune system attacks its nerves.

According to Sobchak's news channel, specialists in "chemical protection suits" examined the room in which he suddenly became ill.

Chubais had been a prominent fixture in Russian politics and an ally of President Vladimir Putin's since the 1990s. He oversaw privatisation during Russia's transition to a market economy, became CEO of Russia's state power monopoly, and took the reins of Rosnano, a state technology company.

More recently, he served as Putin's international climate envoy. He left that post - and Russia entirely - in March without stating a reason, although it was widely believed to have stemmed from his opposition to the invasion of Ukraine.

He is one of the highest-level Russian officials to have resigned from Putin's government since February.

Chubais' current location has not been disclosed.

It is unclear what happened to Chubais, although news of his sudden illness drew attention to a series of episodes in which Kremlin opponents have been poisoned.

Opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned in 2020 with the chemical agent Novichok. In 2015, opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza also suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former agent in the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, died of radioactive polonium 210 poisoning in London in 2006.